Tuesday, 23 February 2016

'Deathrising' marks
the first release for Italian gothic-doom metal outfit Motus Tenebrae
on My Kingdom Music and they are quickly asserting themselves as a
stand-out on the label’s already impressive roster. After a fifteen
year career already the band strike hard with their fifth full-length
album distilling their experience and filtering it through influences
such as My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Type O Negative into a
melancholic and morbid offering.

The album channels the blunt
heaviness of the most recent Paradise Lost albums, adds a little of
the old school death doom aggression, sprinkles some hints of
symphonic orchestration, and balances it with Peter Steele style
melodies to give a wonderfully balanced and miserable presentation.
It's a strong album right from the start with songs like 'Our
Weakness', 'Black Sun', 'Light That We Are', 'Faded', 'Deathrising',
and 'Desolation' providing undeniably outstanding moments of
monolithic misery. To be perfectly honest though, there isn't a bad
track on this album. The band maintain an enviable consistency across
each of the eleven assembled tracks adding variety to their sound as
they go.

'Deathrising' is the kind of album that should make
you sit up and take notice. The song writing, performance and
production are all spot on to compete easily with the kind of bands
that inspired them and have already carved out international careers.
The mix is perfectly balanced with the vocals forcing their way
through a barrage of thunderous drums, scathing guitar riffs and
subtle orchestral embellishments to stamp their claim on the
gothic-doom genre.

Fans of the likes of Paradise Lost, Type O
Negative, My Dying Bride, A Pale Horse Named Death, Moonspell, and
Swallow The Sun in particular will eat this album up with ease and
will be left wanting more. Motus Tenebrae have thrown everything they
have into 'Deathrising' and it shows. This is an album that shows a
band that are more than ready for a big international push to put
them where they deserve to be.